I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last 500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise the development of articles.
My question is how does an editor--who spends all their time in Wikipedia space--know what they are trying to achieve?
Peter Ansell
Peter Ansell wrote:
I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last 500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise the development of articles.
My question is how does an editor--who spends all their time in Wikipedia space--know what they are trying to achieve?
That depends on what they're doing. Can you tell us which pages (or sorts of pages) in the Project namespace they're contributing to?
On 10/19/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last 500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise the development of articles.
My question is how does an editor--who spends all their time in Wikipedia space--know what they are trying to achieve?
I think that you need to be careful about that; I've seen quite a number of experienced editors and administrators fall into that trap for periods of time. I myself am currently extricating myself from an hole I fell in for a couple of months, doing much more "administrative stuff" in wikispace and talk than any real article edits. Fortunately I realized what I was doing, and simultaneously realized there were several whole classes of engineering materials articles which didn't exist yet, so I've started working on those...
On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:48:43 -0700, "George Herbert" george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Fortunately I realized what I was doing, and simultaneously realized there were several whole classes of engineering materials articles which didn't exist yet, so I've started working on those...
YMYA. Only in my case I'm looking at industrial controls and quarry plant.
Guy (JzG)
On 10/20/06, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
I think that you need to be careful about that; I've seen quite a number of experienced editors and administrators fall into that trap for periods of time. I myself am currently extricating myself from an hole I fell in for a couple of months, doing much more "administrative stuff" in wikispace and talk than any real article edits. Fortunately I realized what I was doing, and simultaneously realized there were several whole classes of engineering materials articles which didn't exist yet, so I've started working on those...
Raw numbers are pretty meaningless (most of my article space edits lately have been removeing images)
On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 09:55:35 +1000, "Peter Ansell" ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last 500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise the development of articles.
It rather depends. If they are an admin, doing admin things, then it's understandable. One of the more frustrating things is that we take people who are good editors, give them admin tools, and then they spend the rest of their time fighting idiots until they get pissed off and leave. Well, maybe.
I have to say, though, that the so-called "sandboxians" who spend their time at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox/Storytelling and so on, really do seem to have missed the point a bit.
Guy (JzG)
JzG wrote:
I have to say, though, that the so-called "sandboxians" who spend their time at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox/Storytelling and so on, really do seem to have missed the point a bit.
Shouldn't they be at everything2 or something?
On 20/10/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last 500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise the development of articles.
My question is how does an editor--who spends all their time in Wikipedia space--know what they are trying to achieve?
The real question is what was before those 500 edits. Are we talking someone who only sits in that namespace ever, or are we talking a several-year-standing highly active user who happens to have been focusing on project work in the last few weeks?
The answers for the two cases are very different.
On 22/10/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 20/10/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last 500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise the development of articles.
My question is how does an editor--who spends all their time in Wikipedia space--know what they are trying to achieve?
The real question is what was before those 500 edits. Are we talking someone who only sits in that namespace ever, or are we talking a several-year-standing highly active user who happens to have been focusing on project work in the last few weeks?
The answers for the two cases are very different.
Hi,
Sorry for not saying which editor it is so that others can cross check them. Basically, they have been around for 2 years. It is possibly not so bad as they are discussions proposals constantly and possibly finding that their best contribution to Wikipedia can be in just discussing proposals.
They have little to do with any backlog related issues though, which would not be so concerning, if they have an area of interest that they were improving on the side. Which is why I put that down.
According to a contribution history from http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate , they do not have any pages in Main space with over 10 edits, 9,7,7 are the top three. I am wondering why they are here, then I look at Wikipedia space and the highest page has 407, followed by 382, 326.
I just do not see how they are practically improving the encyclopedia with these types of distributions of edits.
Peter Ansell
On 22/10/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I just do not see how they are practically improving the encyclopedia
with these types of distributions of edits.
I think the issue is being overblown a bit. Some people prefer to be involved in the day-to-day running and administration of projects and I don't think there's a problem with letting them do this. Encyclopedia Britannica hires many people who are involved in admin-only work.
If there were hundreds of users doing this there would be a problem; we'd have to examine why so many non-participating users are influencing policy.
On 10/22/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
According to a contribution history from http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate , they do not have any pages in Main space with over 10 edits, 9,7,7 are the top three. I am wondering why they are here, then I look at Wikipedia space and the highest page has 407, followed by 382, 326.
Those kind of stats, without anything else, doesn't necessarily mean much. If you're a person that do alot of RC-patrol and/or other gnomish activites, you don't usually get that many edits per article. Also, many people do substantial improvements in just one edit (I tend to do that, and thus I have similar numbers). These situations are not uncommon. I know a number users who have improved a thousands of articles with just one edit. Many people edit that way. My point is that you need to look at fuller picture of an editors activites before you can judge him.
As some other people have pointed out, if this editor did substantial work before his latest 500 edits, even if that work was just cleanup or RC-patrol and such, he has earned his position in the community. And with that, his rights to influence policy.
Again, I can't really say whether this is the case here. I'm just saying, numbers can be decieving.
--Oskar
On 23/10/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/22/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
According to a contribution history from http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate , they do not have any pages in Main space with over 10 edits, 9,7,7 are the top three. I am wondering why they are here, then I look at Wikipedia space and the highest page has 407, followed by 382, 326.
Those kind of stats, without anything else, doesn't necessarily mean much. If you're a person that do alot of RC-patrol and/or other gnomish activites, you don't usually get that many edits per article. Also, many people do substantial improvements in just one edit (I tend to do that, and thus I have similar numbers). These situations are not uncommon. I know a number users who have improved a thousands of articles with just one edit. Many people edit that way. My point is that you need to look at fuller picture of an editors activites before you can judge him.
As some other people have pointed out, if this editor did substantial work before his latest 500 edits, even if that work was just cleanup or RC-patrol and such, he has earned his position in the community. And with that, his rights to influence policy.
Again, I can't really say whether this is the case here. I'm just saying, numbers can be decieving.
--Oskar
That may be the case if they do have a large number of single edit mainspace contributions, but they actually got straight into administration issues from the time they arrived, starting with XfD's in their first few edits and not stopping up until now.
Maybe my initial summary was wrong. I was simply trying to point out that unless you know what the deal is with editing articles, how can you deal with the meta issues? Keep in mind this is not what I would call a company, its a single class community IMO.
Peter Ansell
My 14th edit was to an AfD, and nearly all of my current edits (except for occasional RC patrolling and the first article I've written in months) are to projectspace. So?
On 10/23/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/10/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/22/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
According to a contribution history from http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate , they do not have any pages in Main space with over 10 edits, 9,7,7 are the top three. I am wondering why they are here, then I look at Wikipedia space and the highest page has 407, followed by 382, 326.
Those kind of stats, without anything else, doesn't necessarily mean much. If you're a person that do alot of RC-patrol and/or other gnomish activites, you don't usually get that many edits per article. Also, many people do substantial improvements in just one edit (I tend to do that, and thus I have similar numbers). These situations are not uncommon. I know a number users who have improved a thousands of articles with just one edit. Many people edit that way. My point is that you need to look at fuller picture of an editors activites before you can judge him.
As some other people have pointed out, if this editor did substantial work before his latest 500 edits, even if that work was just cleanup or RC-patrol and such, he has earned his position in the community. And with that, his rights to influence policy.
Again, I can't really say whether this is the case here. I'm just saying, numbers can be decieving.
--Oskar
That may be the case if they do have a large number of single edit mainspace contributions, but they actually got straight into administration issues from the time they arrived, starting with XfD's in their first few edits and not stopping up until now.
Maybe my initial summary was wrong. I was simply trying to point out that unless you know what the deal is with editing articles, how can you deal with the meta issues? Keep in mind this is not what I would call a company, its a single class community IMO.
Peter Ansell _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Andrew Gray wrote:
On 20/10/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last 500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise the development of articles.
My question is how does an editor--who spends all their time in Wikipedia space--know what they are trying to achieve?
The real question is what was before those 500 edits. Are we talking someone who only sits in that namespace ever, or are we talking a several-year-standing highly active user who happens to have been focusing on project work in the last few weeks?
The answers for the two cases are very different.
You're both right. Applying this to any one editor would be a time consuming process. Administration is an open pit of a job where it's very easy to lose track of why you are involved in Wikipedia in the first place. Civil engineers with great ideas about design and construction end up administring companies, and never do real engineering work again.
Worthwhile as it may be we have never asked admins to subject themselves to reality checks from time to time. It would be a great idea to require that admins spent 10% of their work on real edits, but I doubt that it would be enforceable.
Ec
On 10/22/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Worthwhile as it may be we have never asked admins to subject themselves to reality checks from time to time. It would be a great idea to require that admins spent 10% of their work on real edits, but I doubt that it would be enforceable.
Define "real edits" and "work".
geni wrote:
On 10/22/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Worthwhile as it may be we have never asked admins to subject themselves to reality checks from time to time. It would be a great idea to require that admins spent 10% of their work on real edits, but I doubt that it would be enforceable.
Define "real edits" and "work".
Sorry if those words weren't clear.
By "real edits" I mean edits to directly improve articles in the main namespace.
By "work" in this context I mean a person's overall efforts in any namespace.
Ec
On 10/23/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
By "real edits" I mean edits to directly improve articles in the main namespace.
Does removeing deleted images count?
By "work" in this context I mean a person's overall efforts in any namespace.
Can I count the effort that goes towards getting certian pics?
On 10/22/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/23/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
By "real edits" I mean edits to directly improve articles in the main namespace.
Does removeing deleted images count?
By "work" in this context I mean a person's overall efforts in any namespace.
Can I count the effort that goes towards getting certian pics?
Why even worry about the distinction? The notion that we should be micromanaging other people's editing habits, or really entertain the notion that one sort of editing is more "real" than the other, seems totally counterproductive to me. Last time I checked this was a volunteer enterprise with no shortage of database space, so who cares?
More damage seems to be caused by the periodic attempts by people to enforce their own "Wikipedia norms" onto others than by any of the "deviant" behaviors by themselves. We must accept that something as decentralized and sprawling as a massive wiki will not be a tightly-run ship. It can't be, and it doesn't need to be. It's a bazaar, not a cathedral, to use Raymond's terms.
If two dozen editors want to use Wikipedia to play Sudoko all day, it is easier to let them do it than it is to bother with trying to create complicated metrics, guidelines, and rules, and then enforce them and deal with adaptation, resistance, and frustration.
FF
On 10/19/06, Peter Ansell ansell.peter@gmail.com wrote:
I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last 500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise the development of articles.
What exactly are you worried about? I could guess at some things, but they'd really only be guesses.
And what makes you think Wikipedia: space is for organizing the development of articles? Seems to me that's more the job of the Talk: space, and that Wikipedia: space is for more meta type issues.
My question is how does an editor--who spends all their time in Wikipedia space--know what they are trying to achieve?
I can't say I understand this question. How does an editor...know what they are trying to achieve?
Anthony